Helen, let’s talk about Brentford first. How and when did you get into following the Bees?
I am the first and only Brentford fan in my family. I grew up living in Kew with my mum and my grandmother, and they weren’t interested in football at all, but I got into it by watching football on TV and then I just really wanted to go to an actual game.
I think I was about 12 when my mum took me, under sufferance, to Griffin Park.
That first game was dull, and we lost; we sat in the Brook Road stand and there was no atmosphere, but I was still hooked. Eventually my Mum just said, enough, just go on your own; she always felt it was very safe, she knew where I was and there were plenty of stewards around, although there were not millions of women attending at that point!
Did you start quizzing at an early age too?
I went to Grey Court School in Petersham and I got picked for the school team for this annual general knowledge quiz at the Royal Star & Garter Home. It was very exciting because Bamber Gascoigne hosted it, as he lived in Richmond. (I actually saw him swimming in the Thames once when I was on a boat trip: I thought, woah, it’s Bamber Gascoigne! I was shocked, you never saw anyone swimming in the river. He lived a long life though, so it couldn’t have been that bad.)
Other than me it was all boys, who I have to say didn’t always listen to me. I was pretty small at that point too, I could barely see over the table. But there was one question where Bamber Gascoigne said, we should ask Helen, because she knows the answer (it was obviously written all over my face), and that was a huge boost to my confidence.
Did Bamber get you to apply for University Challenge?
I went to Keele University to study Latin and Economics and but I never got to try for University Challenge because Keele never seemed to put up a team, so at that point it was mostly pub quizzes, which were fun. Everybody enjoys getting the answer right don’t they, I think it’s a universal human thing to enjoy being the only person who knows the answer to a question! Then after I met my husband Simon we used to watch Only Connect together and would spend a lot of time shouting out the answers from the sofa, as you do, and one day he said, ‘We should go on that’. So we applied, and got to appear on the show in 2013. We went out on a tiebreak, which traumatised my husband, but a lot of the other contestants we met were serious quizzers, and that was epic, like a portal into a whole new dimension. That’s how we came to join Quiz League of London, which is a pub-based social quiz league, and it became a serious hobby.
Tell us how you came to appear on Mastermind.
The first time I had a go at Mastermind was actually 2016, and I was very wet behind the ears. My subject was the band REM. I did well and got 25 points, but came fourth. I’d got the bug though. You’re allowed to re-apply every three years, so I went back in 2019 and did the London Underground. That was great fun to research, I’d take the afternoon off work and just ride around on the Tube, looking at the architecture. Second time around I missed out on going through because I had too many passes, so that just made me even more determined to apply again, in 2023.
How do you even start to pick a subject?
If you pass the audition, which is usually over the phone, you have to come up with five potential subjects, and they have to be different to anything you might have done before. Then if you’re accepted, the Mastermind team agree with you which one you’ll do, and someone who is a professional setter with an interest in ‘your’ area sets the questions. I did a 17th-century woodcarver called Grinling Gibbons for my round one subject. It’s agreed between you that you will use a certain set of source material, so the subject is somewhat contained, but you still have to know your subject backwards. I had a question in my 2016 REM heat about someone doing percussion on a chair leg, which was mentioned in four words in one book, and I just overlooked it.
Then what happens – how do you prepare?
You get about ten weeks to prepare after being invited on, and the same again between heats and semis, and semis and finals.
I go through the books two or three times, and pick out facts and potential questions. Then it’s all about repetition. I work full-time as a taxonomist, which is all about organising and classifying data or information, words and text, in order to achieve something useful (build e-commerce websites for example), so that probably does help me.
I also work on a project basis, so I can fit quizzing around my work; for Mastermind I was probably studying for about ten hours a day on my days off.
That sort of commitment is what puts a lot of people off, understandably, but me, I was in my element. I don’t drive and the trains are always horrible, so I’ve been getting the official coach to away games this season: you can get a lot of revision done with four hours of just motorway.
So this year you not only got through the heat but also sailed through the semi final – brilliant!
Getting through the heats and on to the semi-final this time was really exciting. I chose 18th-century prime ministers, and that was good fun because the source material was really well written, and it was a fascinating time in history. Then when I got through to the final, I did the ancient Greek poet Sappho. My top tip for picking a Mastermind specialist subject would be to pick something you really enjoy, because you’re going to be living with it for months. If you just pick what you think might be a ‘good’ subject, you can end up hating it. I think it definitely helped me this time having had that ‘big match experience’ before, but I didn’t always feel as calm as I may have looked – sometimes your heart’s just pounding.
How was the final? Did you get to have a beer with Clive Myrie?
They film the show in Belfast and send you back and forth on easyJet, so it’s not that luxurious. Also, you don’t really get to mingle with Clive, they keep him apart from you a little bit, just to create the whole vibe, and he’s filming about five shows a day, so he has time for a cup of tea in between and that’s about it. The production team did come to our house in Leytonstone and spent a whole day filming me for the piece they showed before my specialist round though. I talked a lot about Brentford and I was a bit disappointed that they edited the whole thing out, but I did at least manage to wear my shirt with the Bee logo; they queried the ‘branding’ but I stuck to my guns, so at least I got a little bit of Brentford in there.
I can’t lie, I was disappointed not to win the final, but it was amazing to get that far. I did get the best score in the general knowledge round in the final, so I was proud of that. I was a bit unlucky with the Mastermind filming schedule this time around, because I missed two wins, Burnley and West Ham (the filming was done in 2023). Maybe I should miss more games!
No, we don’t want that. Where do you sit at the GTech?
My season ticket is in the South Stand at the lounge level and I go on my own – Simon’s team is Ipswich, but he isn’t really a serious football fan. I love where I sit because the people nearby have become really good friends. There’s a guy in his ’80’s who sits a couple of seats to the left of me, he’s been watching Brentford since he was seven, and he still jumps up when we score! I’m convinced that that sense of purpose, and seeing friends every week, is keeping him young. I hope I’m still there when I’m 85. And I do all the away games; when we got promoted and moved to the GTech I thought, I want to make the most of this, because it might only be one season. Happily that’s not been the case.
It sounds like Brentford is an important part of your life?
It’s hard to put into words what Brentford means to me.
It’s just been a constant through my life, and it’s endured through everything else I’ve done.
In the early years, because there were some things that weren’t great in my childhood, it was pure escapism.
For two hours on a Saturday you could focus on something else. It was probably the start of my interest in data, as well: I used to collect the programmes and I’d hang around by the tunnel and get autographs before every game – there was a lot less competition for that at Griffin Park!
Any favourite players over the years?
I really liked Gary Phillips, our goalie in the mid/late, 80s, my mum found him attractive so that’s probably why she came to those early games. Andy Sinton was the first player I thought was really amazing, it felt like he did stunning things every single week. It was tough when he got sold to QPR… probably a valuable life lesson in disappointment.
And I loved Dean Holdsworth. When we won the Third Division in 1992 at Peterborough, I didn’t get to go because I was too young, but when they all came back to Griffin Park and made speeches from the Braemar Road stand, I somehow managed to get up to where the players were. I got a hug from Dean Holdsworth, and I thought: being a Brentford fan is never going to get any better than this. He might have had a couple of beers at that point but there was such a feeling of yes, we finally won something. Then the next year it all went tits up. But if you’re a proper fan you just keep going, don’t you? Once it gets in your blood…
Are you an optimist or a pessimist when it comes to the Bees?
My husband always jokes, it’s the hope that kills you, and every Saturday he waves me off and I’m all smiley and ready to go, and for quite a lot of this season I’ve come home and he says, oh, did you lose again? But then we had that win at Wolves and I was like, yay, this is why I do this!
I hear you had another close encounter with a well-known Bees player?
I was wrong about ’92 being the best it was going to get, because in 1999, when we won the Fourth Division at Cambridge United, I was actually there, right behind our goal, and after the game Andy Woodman gave me his gloves. I was in my 20s then, but I was very short so maybe he thought oh, I’ll give my gloves to this kid! I wasn’t going to say, I’m 25 you know, I just said thanks Andy, and then I had to fend off this little boy who wanted them. I keep them in a special storage box at home; if the house is burning down the gloves are priority four, after my husband, the cat, and important documents. I did actually go on to play in goal myself for a while, for Barnet FC: I wasn’t the tallest but to me playing goalie is more about skill, and bravery. That kind of memory is the sort of thing that keeps me going back to Brentford, having that connection, that little special thing that only you’ve experienced.
You did brilliantly, and we were all cheering you on for the final. Any reaction from the club?
I’m not sure many of the players watch Mastermind, but I like the idea of Ivan Toney shouting out answers from the sofa! I love all the players we have at the moment, and try to sponsor someone’s kit every season. I chose Mad Roerslev this year, I like him because he’s not a multi-million pound player (yet), and he doesn’t always get to play, but he just gets on with it.
To coin a phrase… you’ve started, so will you finish?
I will try to get onto Mastermind again, but I’ll have to wait another three years before I can apply. I don’t want to be like Brentford though, and try nine times to finally get to where I want to be. That would be a terrible thing to pick for Mastermind actually, Brentford in the Play-Offs – it’s far too huge a subject.
Thanks Helen. We are all proud of you!